Unto the Heirs Is Ruin
by Wildhorses1492
Summary: It begins with peace and ends in hellfire. Always. I have never seen something contrary to the theory. Well, only once. But that was my father's victory, not mine. My uncle's, my aunts'. It did not belong to me. Nothing as such ever belonged to me. My father and his siblings led into peace, but I shall end in the flames of war. Such has it been with heirs, so will it always be.
**_~ Unto the Heirs Is Ruin~_**

The boy stared into the flames as they licked the dry wood of the pyres. _Four pyres,_ he counted in his young mind, _four pyres for four dead monarchs_. And one was his father. But his father's body was not burning to ashes upon the bed of wood drenched with oil. The soldiers never found the High King's body –his father– or the bodies of his uncle and aunts.

As the flames rose higher he felt his mother tighten her fingers around his hand. He looked up into her beautiful face –his mother was so lovely, his father had told him, but he knew it already, just from looking at her– and saw tears falling down her pale cheeks. She cried so much since the horses had returned riderless a moon past. He looked at his little sister, held safe by his mother as she cowered against her shoulder, watching the flaming pyres with wide eyes.

He was eight summers old. Soon he would be nine. But that didn't bother him so much. What bothered him was that his father wouldn't see him learn swordplay. Uncle Edmund wouldn't be there to teach him, like he'd sworn. Uncle Edmund _always_ kept his promises; this would be the very first he'd broken. Suddenly, he felt the unfairness about it all. Why _wouldn't_ father be here to watch him? Why _wouldn't_ Uncle Edmund be here to teach him?

His mind drifted to the two men: tall, pale, solemn and brunet Uncle Edmund and broad-shouldered, tan, strong and blond father. Mother said he looked like his father. But he felt more like Uncle Edmund. He liked to be quiet and watch things happen; watch people react and talk about everything.

It wasn't fair! Mother knew how to be a leader, he didn't doubt it. But she didn't know how to be a _king_. Only father and Uncle Edmund knew that. But they had abandoned him.

He felt tears start to fall down his face, unbidden. He knew he shouldn't cry in front of mother or Lilianna because he had to be strong, but he wanted to sob until he had no more tears left to cry. He was tired of being grown-up. He was only _nine_ , he wanted to argue with father; only a very little boy. He did not think he could be a good king yet. He did not want to wear a heavy crown and sit on a big throne. It was fun when father had given him his golden crown to play with, and boosted him into his great marble seat at Court, but he didn't really _want_ that.

He wanted to run around with Tog and Bally the Hounds. He wanted to play soldiers with Aurelian, General Oreius's son. His shoulders shook as he cried. It was mean and unfair of father and Uncle to do this to him. But it was also Aunt Lucy and Aunt Susan's fault too. _They_ had all left him and mother and Lili on their own. _They_ had abandoned them. Because they wanted to play "hunt after the Stag." He brushed his forearm across his face, sniffling.

Why was everything so . . . _unfair_?

 **|~(o0o)~|**

He stared at the burning bonfire, feeling empty. His people danced happily, eager to celebrate because they had a new king. Like in the old days, many were beginning to whisper. He had come across two Leopards saying those very words a few days past. Already they were calling father's days the 'old days,' the "golden" age. He hated it. He hated that his father had not been here to show him what to do and what not to do; that Uncle Edmund had not been here to tell him if allowing Calormene slavers to trade in the Lone Islands was a wise move.

He despised them and wept because he did not have them long enough to learn from them. Mother had, he though cruelly, watching her as she gently moved from guest to guest, smiling softly and speaking the graceful words he did not feel like saying in this moment. Captain Tobias had known them for _eleven_ _years_ before Father and his siblings vanished. He felt wickedly tricked out of what was his own. Spitefully, he cursed them for leaving him, though he knew deep down it was not their fault if they were killed in an accident or murdered by assassins.

But he _wanted_ to have them. Wanted them to be here to advise him so much it was beginning to sound pitiful, and he was the only one to whom he'd uttered such longings. Sighing, he dropped his crowned head into his hands. He sat in a room filled with people, yet he was isolated and adrift. He had no hope to repair the damage in his kingdom. He did not know the Telmarine people as well as Uncle Edmund and Aunt Susan had. He did not know, and it frightened him.

War was coming, and he could feel the heat of the yet-distant flames on his skin, and they sent terror through his being. He couldn't stop it. He lifted his head, watching all the laughing and dancing people, his subjects. Sorrow welled in his heart. He was not noble or wise enough to prevent what would befall them. In his nightmares he heard their cries of terror, saw the world fall, and knew he was not a worthy king.

Narnia would be destroyed by the High King's heir. The Narnian people danced as if the world had not changed, but it had become a monster while they slept in innocence and ignorance. He watched his mother, her pale fingers delicately wrapped around the stem of a silver goblet. She had told him that morning, before he was crowned. She would not walk this earth for long now. The physicians had told her, and the Centaurs had seen stars align foretelling sorrow. She would die. And then he would have no council, no guide through the troubled waters rising steadily.

He sat in fear of how Narnia would endure without his beloved mother. Laughter caught his attention, and his gaze drifted to his sister, dancing with his teacher and best friend. Lili was beautiful. Regal. Many said she looked like their father's family, but he saw mother in her. In the way she danced now, especially. Compared to the Captain's dark features, she was a dryad. As he watched her dance, he came upon the answer to what he would do after his mother's death.

Lili would be queen. They would be the High King's heirs and rule like his father had done with his siblings so many years ago. If he was to burn his country, it would be blackened and charred with the strongest and noblest flame he could create. Narnia might perish, but she would do so in such a great inferno that the victors would not easily forget her fierce and ethereal power. Grimly, he thought it through.

His Narnia would be remembered with the scent of hellfire on the wind, and his father's with peace in the hearts of all creatures. He knew it. Such was the way this would always be. He was the heir, and the heir is truly the one left to perish in the flames while the predecessor lived in luxury. He and his sister would suffer the burden of ruling a country at war, but ultimately they would be forgotten. His father and his father's siblings ruled in great and glorious peace, but would be immortalized.

It was a bitter and bloody fact.

But he accepted it gracefully.

For unto the heirs shall the ruin be. His sister's eyes met his suddenly, and he knew she knew. Cold dread tore through him as he understood that he could not avoid what was coming, nor could he leave it to another. It was the end. It was fire.

* * *

 **A/N:**

 **Written literally spur-of-the-moment as I listen to Adele's _Skyfall,_ it's written from the p.o.v of King Lucian the Lionhearted, son of High King Peter and his wife Queen Amalia, and the last Narnian king of pure "Narnian" blood to sit on the Narnian throne. He's from my AU Narnia canon, and you can find him in the first book of my Star Cycle, ' _Star Crossed'_.**

 **'Lili' is Queen Lilianna the Fair, Lucian's sister. She was crowned queen after her mother's death (from what we call tuberculosis) alongside Lucian. She is also in the FFN book I mentioned. Along with Captain Tobias of the Narnian Cavalry. I'll answer questions about them, but mainly leave them alone.**

 **The title for this story comes from watching too many movies about heirs and inheriting from predecessors. I realized, watching these films and shows, that more often than not, the heir inherits something that is falling to ruin. Something that will not survive as the past master/ruler had it. Seeing that, it makes one realize very quickly that to the heir is ruin.**

 **I know that the Pevensies didn't have a rule filled with flowers, laughter and sunshine, but for the greater part of their rule, they did. C.S. Lewis wrote that they did. For the last ruler or regent, or whoever was presiding over Narnia at the time the Telmarines invaded, there was only war and bloodshed and pain to be seen in every turn.**

 **Yet those people who lived in that time are forgotten, why? Only the Pevensies are remembered. Though I understand completely why they are, I find something rather cruel about the blankness and the lack of knowledge of those last Narnians who fought so valiantly at the end of the Golden Age.**

 **Please do tell me what you think,**

 **WH**


End file.
